The harsh reality of the situation was that if it came down to a fight, Cole’s group was outnumbered and seriously outgunned. But they had to stay put. If they tried to make a run for it now, they would be seen and chopped into mincemeat.
He took his eye off the scope long enough to glance over at Bauer, who watched the German troops on the road intently, calculation evident in his eyes as if weighing his chances of escape.
“Don’t get any ideas,” Cole whispered.
“Be quiet,” Bauer snapped. “They will shoot us both.”
That had sounded an awful lot like an order, which rankled Cole. The German officer seemed to have forgotten just who was in charge here.
Who the hell did this Kraut think he was? Cole debated going ahead and sticking that knife between Bauer’s ribs just to shut him up for good.
But this was not the time for that. Reluctantly, he had to admit that Bauer was right about the need to keep quiet. The tanks would pass no more than fifty feet away from their hiding place at the side of the road. This was a time to hide rather than fight.
He looked over at Vaccaro, who seemed to be doing his best to sink into the snowy ground behind the log. Vaccaro caught his eye with an expression that seemed to say, How the hell did we get into this mess?
Cole felt the same way. He wished that they had retreated deeper into the forest. Better yet, not to have left Bastogne in the first place. They would just have to lie low until the Germans went past.
Vaccaro didn’t give any indication that he was planning anything stupid. Cole still gave him a shake of his head to encourage that line of thinking.
Cole returned his eye to the rifle scope and scanned the approaching column. As soon as he did so, he felt Bauer go tense beside him. Obviously the man did not like the idea of watching idly while an American shot his comrades.
“Don’t get riled,” Cole whispered. “I’m just keeping an eye on your friends there.”
He sensed Bauer relax ever so slightly.
Cole moved the reticle from one target to the next, but held his fire. The men weren’t far away to begin with, and they sprang much closer through the scope to the point where he could see the details of their faces. These were not old men or boys rushed into uniform. They had the look of battle-hardened troops.
His sights settled on the lead tank. It would be so easy to pick off the tank commander, who stood exposed in the hatch. Cole’s finger itched on the trigger, resisting the urge.
One comforting thought was that the panzers were so close that their 88s might be useless at such close range. But the Germans wouldn’t need those big guns. Machine guns were mounted on the panzers, not to mention the detachment of infantrymen, several of them armed with Schmeisser machine pistols hanging from leather slings over their shoulders. At this range, their automatic weapons would be more than effective.
If we so much as sneeze, we’re goners, Cole thought.
Again, he took his eye off the scope long enough to glance at Bauer. The man appeared to be holding his breath.
One thing Cole didn’t see were any German snipers, which wasn’t surprising. Who needed a scalpel when you were moving through the woods carrying a sledgehammer?
Once again he let the scope linger on the commander standing in the hatch of the lead tank. The man was gazing intently at the road ahead, not in the least aware that he’d be dead if Cole so much as twitched his finger.
The Germans seemed to be taking forever to go past. Seconds stretched into what felt like minutes. The cold from the frozen ground and snow had already seeped into Cole’s elbows, cramping them, but he ignored the discomfort.
The panzers made an awful racket. In the quiet of the winter forest, that noise carried for a long distance.
Dimly, Cole became aware of more tank sounds. Were they coming from the opposite direction? Maybe it was just his ears playing tricks on him. With all the shooting and battles that he’d been through, it was a wonder that he wasn’t completely deaf. The surrounding hills might be echoing the tank noises.
Bauer grabbed his arm to get his attention. “Down!” he urged. He turned toward Vaccaro and Rupert and repeated the command as loudly as he dared, adding a hand gesture for emphasis. In Vaccaro’s case, the order wasn’t necessary, because he held the log he was hiding behind in a lover’s embrace. Foolishly, Rupert was still peering over the log. He held the carbine, the small rifle looking like a toy compared to what they were up against. At Bauer’s urging, he ducked down.
Once again Cole felt annoyed that their prisoner thought that he could issue orders. But the reason for Bauer’s urgency soon became clear.
It turned out that the sound of more tanks approaching wasn’t simply in Cole’s imagination. He knew something was up when he saw the Germans spring into action.
The commander of the lead tank shouted an order, and the infantrymen scattered, some running for the shelter of the trees and others staying on the road but dropping to one knee, using the panzers for cover. A couple of men unlimbered the unwieldy Panzerfaust and aimed them up the road at whatever was coming at the Germans.
Next, the tanks did their best to spread out, although there wasn’t much room for that on the narrow forest track. The lead tank managed to race ahead, and the second nosed into the trees at the side of the road. The third tank stayed right where it was, swiveled its gun, and fired.
The blast made the ground shake, but that was nothing compared to the impact. Looking up the road, Cole was astonished to see the round from the panzer strike an American tank that had come into view around the bend. The round punched right through the armor, nearly dead center.
At first nothing happened, and Cole thought that maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him or that the shell was a dud. Then the tank seemed to hop up off the ground, followed by an explosion that sent flame and smoke shooting from every gap and chink in the armor. Seconds later, flames engulfed the tank. Nobody came crawling out of the inferno.
Cole was horrified at the destruction of his own side’s tank, thinking that the poor bastards on the tank crew never had a chance, yet some part of him still admired the good shooting on the part of the panzer crew. Clearly they knew their business.
A second Sherman tank appeared around the bend, and this one seemed intent on kicking ass and taking names later, unperturbed by the fate of the tank that had been destroyed, firing as it advanced. This tank had supplemented its own armor with several medium-size tree trunks lashed across its front, the logs so green that some had branches with pine needles waving in the wind and crusted snow between the logs, like chinking in a log cabin. Cole didn’t know how effective the logs would be against a direct hit, but they’d be better than nothing. The Shermans didn’t have a good reputation for withstanding direct hits from the heavier German guns. The fate of the first tank had made that abundantly clear.
One shot from the Sherman struck one of the panzers but didn’t penetrate its armor. Instead, the round bounced off the armor plating with an earsplitting karoom and detonated among the trees.
The Sherman kept advancing toward the three panzers. To Cole’s way of thinking, it was nothing short of a suicide mission. Incredibly, the commander in the first German tank still stood in the hatch, almost resembling a soldier charging on horseback. He wasn’t sure whether the German was brave or foolhardy. Then the panzer skidded to a halt and lowered its barrel, taking aim at the Sherman.
It was practically point-blank range. There was no way that the panzer could miss, even if the gunner had been blind in one eye and couldn’t see straight in the other.
Cole made a split decision to do what he could to help the Sherman tank. He was well aware that a rifle was a puny weapon against a tank. Still, he had to try. He lined up the crosshairs on the commander standing in the hatch.